Can Do-It-Yourself Biology Change Science or Save a Life? | TechPresident

"They are rebels with a cause, fighting for open science. Each of them do it in their own way. Still, they all have a common goal: to change the way in which science is practiced, the way its results are distributed and even who gets to participate. It’s a loose movement made up of a new breed of scientists such as the Italian veterinary virologist Ilaria Capua, who challenged the World Health Organization’s policies on sharing data. Her story is well-known. In 2005 an outbreak of avian influenza, caused by a mutated strain of the H5N1 virus, hit Vietnam, then China, Africa and finally Europe. There were fears of a possible pandemic when the first deaths caused by bird-to-human transmission of the virus began to appear. In the middle of the crisis, Capua, who was working for an international agency established to fight avian influenza, refused to deposit data related to the sequencing of the avian flu virus into the WHO database because its access was restricted to a few research groups. Instead she urged her colleagues to deposit their data in a public and open access database. In the end, she created a global consortium of scientists who sought to foster international sharing of avian influenza data, and in 2007 the WHO decided to change its policies on sharing data. Capua’s stand was an act of rebellion against institutional science, a victory for open biology and the start of a new type of scientific research enabled by the Internet and ICT tools, through which international cooperation could be reached by online data sharing. And yes, it was a way of hacking biology. Ilaria Capua (Credit: Fondazione Giannino Bassetti/flickr) Capua's story is just one of many analyzed in a new book, Biohackers. The Politics of Open Science, that explores the changes brought about by the open science movement in the circulation and ownership of scientific information, as well as the relationship between researchers, scientific institutions and commercial companies. According to its author, Alessandro Delfanti, a postdoctoral ..."